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A FEW WORDS 



ON 



ROBERT BROWNING 



nrr 19"'>90 



PHILADELPHIA 

ARNOLD AND COMPANY 
1890 



VA 



Copyright, i£ 



TO 

J. T. V. 



CONTENTS 

I How not to read Browning 

II Obscurity Again 

III The Verdict of tlie Critical 

IV A Glimpse of the Poet 
V Conclusion 



How Not to Read Browning 

Many and sincere were the expres- 
sions of regret when the news came that 
Robert Browning was dead. The major- 
ity of his readers had, in some sort, a 
feehng of personal loss. Even those most 
hostile to his verse, were quick to say 
generous things of his well-lived life. 

With the close of that life begins 
the absolute reign of the critic and the 
commentator. 

What may we not look for in the 
shape of interpretive subtilties and wise 
explanations of hidden meanings ? The 
aesthetic critics, it would seem, went far 
enough before their idol died, but there 
was always the suspicion on their part that 
the genial, bluff, and open-hearted man 
might be laughing quietly to himself at 
the extraordinary mental posturings and 
gesticulations of his worshippers. To be 



lO A FEW WORDS 

sure, the worshippers had no particular 
reason for supposing this, but the possi- 
bility must have been a frightful possi- 
bility. Now, however, they need fear 
nothing. BroAvning is dead ; his remains 
have been buried in Westminster Abbey, 
and his biography has appeared in the 
"Great Writer" series. What further 
need of proof have the commentators 
that his poetry is theirs to do with what 
they will ? 

The "doing" has begun with re- 
newed energy, as people always work 
with peculiar earnestness when they have 
spent the larger part of a day in attend- 
ing a funeral. Already the essays stud- 
ies and critiques have begun to fill a 
considerable space among the new books, 
A stout little buckram-clad tome of 
nearly five hundred pages lies before me, 
not exactly a new book to be sure, — an 
old book " newly imprinted and enlarged 
to almost as much again as it was before." 
It is an excellent indication of what may 
be expected. 



ox ROBERT BROWNING II 

This past and present fertility on 
the part of the pundits suggests some- 
thing. 

Namely this : That a good many 
people instead of being attracted to 
Browning are, and are going to be, re- 
pelled by the appearance of so much 
critical and interpretive literature ; and 
that while the condition of the thinking 
few is being made better, the condition 
of the unconverted many is being made 
worse; and that instead of popularizing 
Browning these books are exerting a 
pernicious influence in tending to make 
him more and more the poet of a 
clique. Admirers of Robert Browning 
can hardly do otherwise than lament the 
fact that he has to so great a degree been 
handed over to the experts. 

The most amusing notions prevail 
with respect to his poetr^^ The difficul- 
ties which lie in the path of one who 
desires to understand it are popularly 
thought to be Titanic. The following ex- 
tract from a letter, written b\' a crentleman 



12 A FEW WORDS 

to a friend, will illustrate a not uncom- 
mon phase of the prevailing miscon- 
ception. 

** Dear . ... I remember 

" that you are what is satirically de- 
" scribed in this family as a ' Brown- 
" ingite.' You will rejoice to know that, 
" after some years of railing at your pet 
*' poet, I have determined to take up the 
" study of his works. Send me a list of 
" introductions and helps for the begin- 
'* ner. I have Mrs. Orr's Handbook, but 
" I want a half dozen volumes in addition. 
** I propose to be well fortified for this 
" undertaking." 

How utterly mistaken is this idea 
of *' fortifying " oneself for a study of 
Browning ; and yet, after all, how en- 
tirely natural in the light of the vast 
critical literature that has sprung up. 
The man who gets together a quantity 
of introductory essays, and worries over 
them before he reads the living words of 
the poet, is not unlike the man who pie- 
pares himself for a difficult climb in the 



ON ROBERT BROWNING 1 3 

Alps by strapping on his back all the 
luggage he can possibly stand up under. 
Surely the only introduction to Brown- 
ing that is needed is Browning. Turn 
the beginner loose with a copy of the 
" Selections " made by Robert Browning 
himself, or even a smaller volume, and 
he will soon find out the things he most 
needs to know. 

Browning is getting fairly encrusted 
with this parasitical literature, not a lit- 
tle of which seems to assume that the 
reader is incapable of taking a single 
step by himself More than that, the com- 
mentators have begun to prey upon one 
another. It makes one think of certain 
pages in the Verhe\^k Eutropiiis, where 
there will be one pica line of text, and 
ninety brevier lines of comment, to ^say 
nothing of the variac Icctioiics, and the 
notes on notes. So in like fashion we 
have first Browning ; then Corson on 
Browning; then Nettleship on Corson on 
Browning ; and presently there will 
be somebody on Nettleship — at which 



14 A FEW WORDS 

juncture the simple-mmded reader may 
be expected to throw his Browning 
and introduction together into the waste 
places of his Hbrary, and betake himself 
to the Psalm of Life and th.Q Bab Ballads, 
within the charmed circle of which verse 
the commentator hath no power to 
destroy. 

But do not understand me to speak 
disrespectfully of the commentators. 
Shade of Joseph Scaliger forbid ! I buy 
all their books most religiously, and as 
religiously place them on a conspicuous 
shelf in my library. I propose some day 
to carefully read everyone of them. But 
now the leaves of many a volume are 
unopened, and their contents a pleasure 
store. 

Why should I read them yet? 
Why should I care to know what this 
or that critic says of Pippa Passes, when 
Pippa Passes is still infinitely beautiful to 
me, and I feci that I have not gotten out 
of it all that I can get alone, without 
note, without an introductory essay ? 



ON ROBERT BROAVNING I 5 

Yet have I respect unto the critic's art ; 
and in the list of authors I love to read, 
there are no names which stand higher 
than the names of Matthew Arnold, 
Walter Pater, Edward Dowden. One 
of these men, Dowden, has written on 
Browning. Yet am I constrained to say, 
better not read the most suggestive 
sentence of the greatest of critics if that 
sentence prejudices you either for or 
against a poetical work, or in any way 
makes an opinion for you instead of 
encouraging you to make an opinion for 
yourself 

There is nothing new in this idea. 
It has been enunciated again and again, 
but it may be of use to some one if it 
shall here find a new application. 

All great imaginative works have 
given rise to this literature of literature. 
Sometimes the secondary literature bus- 
ies itself with the text of an author, 
sometimes with his form and spirit, 
sometimes, as in the case of the older 
writers, with both. This critical literature 



1 6 A FEW WORDS 

is intensely fascinating. Who has 
not enjoyed Stedman's Victorian Poets, 
Birrell's Obiter Dicta^ Henley's Viezvs 
and Reviezvs, and twenty other volumes 
of like nature ? Just now many people 
are reading Henry Van Dyke's admirable 
book on Tennyson. A gentleman said 
to me the other day that he had enjoyed 
that volume as he had not enjoyed a 
book for months, and that he regarded 
it a most valuable addition to his library. 
But it did not come to light from his con- 
versation, that, after reading the essays 
on Tennyson, he had gone back to the 
poet, and was refreshing himself with In 
Menioinani and the Idyls. On the con- 
trary, he had gone that blessed way 
Avhich leads to Rudyard Kipling, and 
was rioting with Mulvaney, or living 
over again the blood-curdling adventures 
of " The Man who would be King." 
For these books of criticfsm are so well 
done that they are accepted as ends in 
themselves.- We read them for the 
enjoyment they give us, and are too often 



ox ROBERT BROWNING 1 7 

content to stop right there. The gentle- 
man would have done Dr. Van Dyke a 
greater compUment had he closed Jiis 
book to take up Tennyson ; but he would 
have done the perfect thing had he pre- 
pared himself for the critic by first 
re-reading the great poet about whom 
the critic was to speak. 

It is a misfortune that people have 
gotten into the habit of always using the 
word ''study "in connection with Brown- 
ing. There is too , much time spent in 
formally studying the great poets, and 
too little time spent in reading them. 
Shakespeare especially is too much 
studied, It is a well-known common- 
place of literary criticism that one should 
never study a play of Shakespeare until 
he has read it at least a dozen times. 
We ought to read the comedies as we 
would read Pickwick Papers, — for the 
story ; the tragedies as we would read 
the Ordeal of Richard Fcvercl, for the 
story ; the histories as we would read 
—well, Mr. Froude's England — for the 



1 8 A FEW WORDS 

story. Then will it be time to study 
the text, and learn what the different 
critics think of Hamlet. This was a 
favorite theory of that brilliant scholar, 
Richard Grant White. Read what he 
says about it in his Studies in Shakes- 
peare. Then apply it to Browning. To 
be sure Richard Grant White, being 
Richard Grant White, is always radical. 
He says : " Throw the commentators and 
editors to the dogs," — which is a sen- 
tence worth considering since it comes 
from the pen of one of the best Shakes- 
pearian editors that ever lived. We may 
not care to go this length with him, but 
may cry a hearty " Amen " when he 
urges the importance of keeping the 
mind " entirely free from the influence of 
what the various eminent critics have had 
to say." After a thorough reading of the 
best plays of Shakespeare, there will 
come, as he has shown, the suitable 
moment for taking up the minutiae of 
textual and aesthetic criticism. So, too, 
after a careful and thoughtful reading 



ON ROBERT BROWNING I9 

of more important poems of Robert 
Browning, it is well enough, and even 
of great advantage, to study Corson and 
Symons, Fotheringham and Nettleship, 
Furnivall and the essays published in 
the Browning Society's papers. 

In brief, the way not to read Brown- 
ing is by means of the commentary and 
the annotation. One should naturally 
begin with the simpler poems. If you 
begin with Sordello^ you are not likely 
to make much progress. Don't begin 
zvith Sordello ! Let it wait until you 
have read pretty nearly everything else. 
In fact I may even say that you will do 
well enough if you never read it at 
all. This I say with impunity, not being a 
member of a Browning society, from which 
I would doubtless be expelled for the 
utterances of so monstrous and hetero- 
dox an opinion ! But my credo for pri- 
vate use on this point is, that the time 
you would need to employ in getting 
poetic gold out of the ore of Sordello^ 
would be put to better use on the Ring 
and the Book, a truly great poem. 



20 A FEW WORDS 

The simpler poems first. Read that 
*' pretty tale," entitled A Talc. Read the 
Boy and the Angel, Prospice, Apparitions, 
A Face, My Last Duchess. Then trv 
those noble poems : Saul, Rabbi Ben 
Ezra, The Epistle, of Karshish. If you 
have read to this point, some oi Brozvn- 
ing's grotesques will not come amiss, 
such as Holy Cross Day, A Heretic s 
Tragedy^ Caliban upon Setebos. The 
poems which concern themselves with 
music and art are splendid illustrations 
of his power, Abt Vogler, Andrea del 
Sarto, Era Lippo Lippi. You will want 
to know what he has done in the dra- 
matic line, and I venture to say that the 
hours will be happy ones in which 
you read Colojnbes Birthday and Pippa 
Passes. By this time, if you are not 
a convert, you ought to be : a convert 
to the belief that Robert Browning 
is one of the most stimulating and 
inspiring authors of the time, and an 
author of whom you cannot afford to 
be ignorant. This is all that is asked, 



ON ROBERT BROWNING 



that there shall be more people who read 
Robert Browning, and not so many 
'' Browningites " to make his cause ridic- 
ulous. 



ON ROBERT BROWNING 23 

II 

Obscurity Again 

It is amusing to hear the charge of 
obscurity brought against Browning's 
verse by people who do not read it. 
That such a thing can be true -seems 
almost incredible, but true it is. For 
the larger part of humanity takes its 
views from sources outside itself; it 
echoes the opinions of others. One 
reason why slang is so prevalent is that 
people are too lazy to think, or rather, 
to do that part of thinking which consists 
in finding appropriate words for such 
thoughts as they do have. The youth 
who expresses his positive admiration 
by calling the thing he likes a " dandy ; " 
and his superlative delight by the even 
more startling phrase a ''Jim Dandy," is 
quite as much a sinner through laziness 
as vulgarity. For it is so easy to be an 
echo, and so difficult to be independent. 



24 A FEW WORDS 

The newspaper paragrapher, when he 
can find nothing better to say, constructs 
a joke at the expense of Brow^ning, or of 
W. D. Howells. I have made a collec- 
tion of these squibs, some of which are 
exquisitely witty, others exceedingly 
bad. En passant, the joke with Mr. 
Howells seems to me to have gone far 
enough. He is a man to be proud of, 
even if one may not approve his theories 
or like his novels. It is not fair that 
every penny-a-liner, who can hardly 
write the English language, should sit in 
anonymous judgment on him, or make 
irritating remarks at his expense. 

To return to this question of Brown- 
ing's obscurity. The charge of incom- 
prehensibility, coming from persons who 
don't read him at all, is only a joke, and 
to be treated as such. 

But if the charge of obscurity comes 
from persons who do not read much 
poetry at best, it is a hardly more serious 
charge. When a man tells me that he 
can't understand Browning, and I question 



ON ROBERT BROWNING 25 

him and find that he never reads much 
poetry to speak of, that he hasn't read 
two plays of Shakespeare in eighteen 
months, that he hasn't looked into Para- 
dise Lost since he used to hunt through 
it for rhetorical figures in college, that 
he never has read the Adonais or the 
Endymion, and that he knows nothing at 
all of Dante Gabriel Rossetti — in short, 
that he has taken up Browning only 
because it is the fashion, I am not sur- 
prised that he finds his task a difficult* 
one. To understand poetry one must 
be in the habit of reading poetry. Poetry, 
if you really wish to enjoy it, must be 
your, daily bread, not your monthly 
indulgence in some highly-seasoned gas- 
tronomic puzzle, which you don't exactly 
like, and can't digest without a violent 
effort. Poetry demands much of him 
who would enjoy it. A sort oi technique is 
required for the reading of poetry, as for 
the playing of the piano or the violin ; 
and the person who runs over the pages 
of the great poetical masters only at long 



26 A FEW WORDS 

intervals will have but a poor tccliniqiie. 
The charge of obscurity coming from 
people who have taken up Browning 
only as they would take up any other 
fad, need not disturb the sincere admirers 
of the poet. 

But the charge comes from yet another 
class of readers, those who do continually 
familiarize themselves with what is best 
worth knowing in the world of books ; 
and who have no foolish prejudices 
against a genius of marked originality, 
but are willing to take him for what he 
really is worth and to make the most of 
what he has to give. These people say 
that Browning is obscure. We trust 
that they have conscientiously taken to 
heart the recommendation, given in the 
introduction to the Browning Bibliogra- 
phy, to the effect that earnest students 
of the great poet will look for the short- 
comings in themselves rather than in 
their master. And if the shortcomings 
are in the readers, why it follows that 
many a so-called obscurity is not an 



ON ROBERT BROWNING I'] 

obscurity at all, or at best a pseudo- 
obcurity. 

There are two sorts of difficulties 
to be met with in Robert Browning's 
poetry, which, it seems to me, may be 
referred directly to the readers. They 
are : — 

I. Difficulties arising from recon- 
dite allusions. 

II. Difficulties arising from the pro- 
fundity of the subject. 

Take the first, recondite allusions. 
Browning was a wide reader, a profound 
scholar, and also thoroughly versed in that 
knowledge which comes by constant 
intercourse with men in their various 
conditions. He was at the same time a 
bookworm, and a man of the world ; a 
denizen of libraries, and a keen-eyed 
observer of the ways of the human 
animal. He knew many languages and 
many literatures. He understood music 
and art, philosophy and history. He 
lived much in the past and much in 



28 A FEW WORDS 

the present. Very naturally are there to 
be found in his poems allusions to scenes, 
incidents, and characters, with which the 
averao^e reader is not acquainted. But 
these things are all the legitimate sub- 
stance of poetry, and if Mr. Browning 
saw fit to use them, well and good. If 
we don't comprehend his allusions, it is 
our business to comprehend them.* He 
is under no obligation to write down to 
our level or to confine himself to the 
merely commonplace and familiar, 
because the majority of people under- 
stand the commonplace and that alone. 
In one of the Western papers there was 
a sarcastic little review of Parleying s in 
which the writer expressed considerable 
disgust because Browning had seen fit to 
make a poem about George Bubb Dod- 
dington. " Doddington, Doddington ! " 
plaintively exclaimed the reviewer. " Is 
there anybody who knows who this Dod- 
dington was ? " Possibly. But in truth, 
friend Critic, wouldn't it be a little more 
reasonable in you to hunt around and 



ON ROBERT BROWNING 29 

find out, rather than jeer at the poet be- 
cause he found the subject made to his 
hand ? An obscurity, then, which grows 
out of defective information on the part 
of Mr. Browning's readers is not so 
much obscurity after all. The poetic 
star may be very brilliant, but it will not 
appear so if the observer looks at it 
through a smoked glass. 

In the second place, those diffi- 
culties arising from the profundity of the 
theme under discussion in a particular 
poem. 

Browning was emphatically a thinker, 
skillful in handling some of the weight- 
iest problems that have ever burdened 
the mind. He writes of God, of Im- 
mortality, of Life, Duty. He studies 
the human heart, the conscience, the 
innermost springs of action. Now, if 
in such studies he rolls us out thoughts 
a little bigger than those we are in the 
habit of carrying, it were indeed modest 
in us to find the trouble in ourselves and 
not in him. Obscurity which grows 



30 A FEW WORDS 

out of the reader's incapacity for hard 
thinking is not obscurity at all. Here, 
for example, is a person who has been 
in the habit of reading nothing more 
exacting than the novels of James 
Fenimore Cooper, — hand him a copy of 
the Egoist, and, ten to one, he will tell 
you that he can't read it, that it is 
difficult, obscure. Here is a person 
whose highest climb into the regions of 
verse has been to that vast plateau 
where bloom such flowers of poetry 
as Gone zvith a Handsoiner Man ; offer' 
him the Epipsychidion and he will recoil 
from it. He is not in training for that 
task. It is plain, then, that many peo- 
ple who call Browning " obscure " are 
only saying in another way that their 
own mental equipment is inadequate for 
the demands that his verse makes. 

But there is a third sort of obscurity 
to be met with in Browning's verse, and 
for this the poet is himself responsible. 
I can hardly call it verbal obscurity, and 
yet it is of that nature rather than of 



ON ROBERT BROWNING 3 1 

any other. It includes all that grows out 
of mannerism, both in choice of words 
and in style ; everything that comes 
from his singularities in the use of the 
verbal material of his verse. Here the 
critics are often right. There are extra- 
ordinary grammatical puzzles to be met 
with on many a page of Browning. The 
man wrote a language of his own. We 
call it English, to be sure, but it is not 
the English of Addison, or Macaulay, 
of DeQuincey, or of Cardinal Newman. 
It is the English of Robert Browning, 
stamped with his private seal, and 
unmistakably his. But if the thought 
is worth having, ought people to per- 
mit themselves to be baffled because of 
the strange garb in which the thought 
is presented ? Remember how the 
critics scolded about Carlyle's English. 
** That abominable st}'le," they cried, 
** that half German, half English jar- 
gon ! " We have accepted Carlyle, 
though w^e understand perfectly that we 
are. under no circumstances, to imitate 



32 A FEW WORDS 

his fashion of writing. Surely we may 
do that much for Browning. 

It is certainly true that many a 
seeming difficulty in Browning's verse 
drops away when the reader has famil- 
iarized himself with the poet's peculiar 
mode of expression. And it is also 
true that he has given us a large body 
of unique and fascinating English poetry 
which may be read and enjoyed without 
help of comment or note. If people 
can only be persuaded to read this, much 
will have been accomplished. 



ON ROBERT BROWNING 33 

III 

The Verdict of the Critical 

Mr. Andrew Lang, in a letter ad- 
dressed to Lady Violet Lebas, commends 
her " undefeated resolution to admire 
only the right things," but professes his 
own inability to accommodate his taste 
to the " verdict of the critical." He rs. 
quite content to admire the things which 
nature made him prefer. Comfortable 
is the doctrine of Mr. Lang; and if 
everyone were gifted with tastes as dis- 
criminating as his, we should all be doing 
very well in casting authority to the 
winds, and the cause of good literature 
would continue to be advanced mightily. 
Many there are, however, who are inca- 
pacitated by nature and training to judge 
accurately what is and what is not the 
admirable thing ; and they must there- 
fore accept with becoming meekness the 
"A^erdict of the critical." 



34 



A FEW WORDS 



The verdict to which Mr. Lang 
refers in his letter, is that settled and 
fairly immovable view which has deter- 
mined, by a long dint of hammering at 
it, what is classical, and, therefore, to be 
received without a murmur. 

There is another and more modern 
verdict, which is by no means unani- 
mously gracious with respect to Robert 
Browning. The partisans of his verse 
sincr its praises somewhat loudly ; but 
the detractors are wide awake, and thor- 
oughly cognizant of its defects. These 
hostile critics are a worthy folk, and 
serve an excellent purpose in acting as a 
damper to check the blazing enthusiasm 
of all who have gone Browning-mad. ^ 
Personally I am sorry for the indi- 
vidual who doesn't like to read Browning, 
but I am not disposed to quarrel with 
him. It is not to be expected that we 
wilfall agree in our tastes. We do not 
all like the same dishes, the same pic- 
tures, the same music. Some of us 
object to olives, and find no joy in a 



ON ROBERT BROWNING 35 

lobster salad. It is nevertheless advisa- 
ble to train oneself to eat almost any- 
thing ; for, if we go about the world 
much, "anything" is the thing we are 
pretty sure to be expected to eat. My 
own pet aversion is tomatoes; but I've 
mastered my dislike to the extent that I 
am able to eat tomato soup. This is of 
great advantage to me, being, as I am, 
frequently cast away on a social desert 
island, where tomato soup is the only 
kind ever served. 

Browning is tomato soup to many 
of the critical, and try how they will, 
they cannot relish him. Perhaps the 
readers who like him least are those 
accustomed to select their poets for 
the smoothly-flowing line, and for an 
exactness of rhythm. With these o-races 
Browning is able to adorn his verse, as 
numerous extracts would show. But he 
has certainly employed them far less 
than his poetic contemporaries. Never- 
theless is he a poet, though he turns off 
at right angles from the broad highway 



A FEW WORDS 



of conventional form, and makes a path 
for himself. It has been imputed to 
Browning for a want of righteousness 
that he does not hesitate to be uncouth, 
awkward, abrupt, unmusical, frightfully 
involved in his construction, much given 
to intoxicating his verse with parentheses, 
— which is true, and sometimes painfully 
true. And yet is he a poet, with all 
these sins at his door. In this progres- 
sive day the boundaries of our definitions 
of poetry must be enlarged. Much that 
Dr. Johnson called poetry, is, in our eyes, 
only dull and respectable verse ; while 
if he, in turn, could be questioned about 
many a famous poem of our day, he 
w^ould reply, " Sir, it is the raving of a 
disordered imagination." But if we 
grant him his dull and respectable verse, 
he must not be harsh at the expense of 
our favorite ravings. We ought to be 
catholic in our judgments of poetry. 
We should have room in our hearts for 
many verses of many men. The Brown- 
ing " fad " is pernicious wherever it tends 



ON ROBERT BROWNING 37 

chiefly to make readers of Browning, and 
not readers of all good poetr}'. This 
little volume has been written in the 
hope that some amiable Philistine may 
be turned from his false gods, and led to 
embrace the true religion. The religion 
here preached is a sort of gospel of 
poetry, but it has for no part of its creed 
the doctrine that Browning is the only 
true prophet. There are many prophets, 
and it is becoming in us to have rever- 
ence unto them all. Not one has been 
without his hours of exaltation in which 
he has uttered words transcending the 
earthly and the fleeting. 

I believe in Swinburne and Morris, 
in Rossetti and Tennyson, in Browning, 
Emerson and Walt Whitman, and in 
many more besides. I believe that the 
man or woman w4io aims at culture will 
read and love each of them. Let me 
oft'er a lower motive and say that it is a 
part of literary good breeding to read 
and enjoy them all. You say you do not 
like Milton. Pardon me, but vou have 



38 A FEW WORDS 

no business not to like Milton, though 
the degree and intensity of your enjoy- 
ment in reading him may be left to your- 
self. And you don't care for Shakes- 
peare ! Worse and worse ! You must 
care for Shakespeare. You must leave 
all other affairs, and proceed at once to 
devote yourselfto caring for Shakespeare. 
The plea that you haven't time will not 
do ; for I noticed, a few months ago, that 
you had ample time to read " Mr. Barnes 
of New York," and ''Mr. Potter of Texas;" 
and I have also noticed that there isn't 
a novel published, 'with a particularly 
startling cover, that does not find its 
way into your library. And what a 
well-selected library it is, where you 
have indulged yourself in such bookish 
luxuries as the Buxton Forman edi- 
tion of Shelley's Works in eight vol- 
umes, and that beautiful limited edition 
of Swift ! With these books in your 
possession, to say nothing of Fielding, 
Sterne, Pepys, and Boswell, all in the 
best editions, you still persist in stacking 



ON ROBERT BROWNING 39 

Up your table with bad translations 
of diabolically clever French novelists. 
And so, while I have no particular 
reverence for that narrow-minded indi- 
vidual, the Browning " crank," I hold in 
like discredit the critic whose "verdict" 
is entirely or largely antagonistic to 
Robert Browning's work. This verdict 
generally comes, as I say, from critics 
who find in perfection of form the only 
true criterion of good poetry. A man 
may take Tennyson as his standard, and 
measure all the other poets by certain 
characteristics of Tennyson's art. He 
may say that all is poetry which fulfills 
these conditions, but anything which 
does not fulfill them is at best but rhymed 
prose. This will not do. The bound- 
aries of our definitions of poetry must 
be made liberal enough to take in a 
great variety of poetry, even the most 
unconventional. We may not construct a 
gilded Procrustes' couch which fits Ten- 
nyson, and then stretch or lop off from 
the other bards in order to adapt them 



40 A FEW WORDS 

to it. And yet a certain critic has actu- 
ally done something of this sort in his 
published estimate of Browning. But I 
fear that if Browning were to stretch him- 
self on this Tennysonian couch of poetry, 
he would crush it into atoms. For the man 
is Titanic, and it is impossible to disre- 
gard the simple mass and volume of his 
work. " Quantity as well as quality — 
when the quality is always high — goes 
to prove great genius/' says Mr. Maurice 
Thompson ; and he is certainly right. 
In thinking of Browning's genius, one 
may no more leave out the idea of quan- 
tity, than in thinking of the Cologne 
Cathedral he may leave out the idea of 
immense bulk. Browning's power of 
sustained and immense effort was one of 
the most splendid of his gifts. Many a 
man has gathered all his powers together 
and done a magnificent thing once. 
Browning lived among those who do 
magnificent things over and over again — 
and think nothing of it. This is genius. 
Some people approach Browning's 



ox ROBERT BROWNING 4I 

work as they would approach the Mat- 
terhorn, if unmoved by its gigantic size, 
unimpressed by the way in which it Hfts 
its mighty head into the region where 
clouds roll, and tempests are made; and 
should be disposed to find fault with it 
because it isn't as mild in its beauty as 
the Rhigi, provided with hotels at the 
summit, and a railroad to carry the 
tourist up. 

But I will not push the parallel too 
far lest I damage the cause I'm trying to 
sustain. It occurs to me that lives have 
been lost on the Matterhorn. 



ox ROBERT BROWNING 43 

IV 

A Glimpse of the Poet 

It was my good fortune, a few years 
ago, to meet Robert Browning at St. 
Moritz, in the Engadine. Later I saw 
him at his home in Warwick Crescent, 
London. In saying that I met Brown- 
ing, let me not unintentionally create the 
impression that I was presented to the 
poet in due form, and by one whose right 
it was to introduce a stranger. No, let 
me the rather confess my guilt, and 
reveal the depths of my depravity. I am 
one of that vast army of Americans, who, 
singly and in detachments, inflicted them- 
selves on the great man, bored him with 
questions about his poetry, took mental 
inventory of the contents of his parlor, 
and devoured him with their eyes. The 
only excuse I can offer is that I was 
younger then than now, and the only 
palliation of my offense, that I made my 



44 A FEW WORDS 

inflictions short. He lost less than an 
hour and a quarter, all told, by my two 
calls. The first time I stayed thirty 
minutes, the second time thirty-five, and 
there was an interval of eight months 
between the two visits. Perhaps the 
gods, whose special function it is to 
protect distinguished authors from tour- 
ists, will forgive me, the more readily in 
this case, if I promise upon my honor, as 
a lover of books and a collector of 
Baskervilles, never to hunt a great man 
again so long as I live. 

Mr. Browning was a shorter and 
stouter man than I had supposed, and 
plainly enough the original of his photo- 
graphs. His face was ruddy, his hair 
very white, his manner animated. He 
was noticeably well dressed ; there was a 
comfortable and easy elegance about him. 
It has long- been a matter of common 
report that Browning looked like a busi- 
ness man, rather than a poet and scholar. 
He might have been a banker, a lawyer, 
a physician, so far as his appearance 



ON ROBERT BROWNING 45 

was concerned. But if a physician, cer- 
tainly a well-to-do one ; if a lawyer, then 
a lawyer accustomed to good fees ; if 
a banker, connected with an institution 
which is not going to give its depositors 
cause for anxiety. But while markedly 
** stylish," he wore his good clothes 
with the air of one who had never 
worn anything else. In his youth I 
fancy that he might have been some- 
thing of a dandy. There was an atmos- 
phere of large prosperity about him that 
was pleasant to feel. 

His manner was simple, kind, 
cheery. He made one feel at home, and 
time went rapidl}'. That blessed saint of 
American literature, Henry W. Longfel- 
low, made each of his chance visitors 
happy by his cordial and unaffected man- 
ner. But Longfellow's sweetness was 
the sweetness of resignation. A young 
woman who had called upon him told 
me that he was so amiable that she 
felt actually guilty ! Browning, fascin- 
ating hypocrite that he was, made the 



46 A FEW WORDS 

stranger feel that his visit was not only 
agreeable, but positively opportune. If 
visitors stayed longer than they ought, 
the fault was quite as much his as their's. 
He should have known that many of the 
people who came hundreds of miles to see 
him were not in their right minds when 
that privilege was vouchsafed them. 

When a man with every indication 
of sincerity in his face and in the tones 
of his voice, invites me to come and see 
him at his home in London, and then 
adds, *' I mean it, I ask you because I 
want you to come " — how can one refuse 
to believe that the invitation is as sin- 
cere and honest as it seems to be ? 
Naturally I went, the time for the call 
having been previously arranged by letter. 
My recollection of the room in which I 
found Mr. Browning and his sister, is 
indistinct. It was a large room, irregu- 
lar in shape, and was upon the second 
floor. There was a grand piano stand- 
ing open and looking as though it had 
been used that morning. A musician 



ON ROBERT BROWNING 47 

will understand this look to which I 
refer. Nothing clear to me now with 
respect to furniture, books, or pictures. 
A marble bust of Mrs. Browning was a 
conspicuous object. 

The poet was as hearty and cordial 
in his greeting as though I had been 
somebody whose friendship was precious 
to him. This generosity in giving of 
himself has made many people love the 
man ; but it has also given the point for 
a sneer at his want of exclusiveness. 
The writer of a flashy book on English 
society holds it up as a matter of re- 
proach to Browning that he was so 
democratic ; intimating that when he 
couldn't be seen at the tables of the 
great, he is willing to be a guest at the 
tables of the small, and that when he 
hadn't a lord to talk with, he was will- 
ing to talk with a very common com- 
moner. This is only a mis-reading of 
the plain and wholesome text of his life. 
If all the testimony of those people who 
knew him w^ell goes to prove anything, 



48 A FEW WORDS 

it is this, that no more sensible, matter- 
of-fact and amiable gentleman has graced 
this age of the world. Readers of his 
poetry may differ by whole diameters 
with respect to his meaning, his style, his 
merits and defects. There can be but one 
opinion as to his life and character. 

A talker needs the inspiration of 
the right listener. Browning was a great 
converser, but it was not to be expected 
that he would talk with a chance caller 
as he would have talked with a brother 
poet or an intimate friend.^ He was sim- 
ple and unpretending in what he said. 
He did not disdain the topic of the weather, 
or the subject of hotels in Italy. He 
impressed one most forcibly as being a 
man who never posed, and who was 
utterly incapable of playing the role of 
a great poet, or of being conscious that 
he was the great man his admirers 
believe him to be. A few of his remarks 
I recall, though I made no memoranda 
at the time, and afterwards tried hard to 
persuade myself that I had not been 
huntincr a lion. 



ox ROBERT BROWNING 49 

Tennyson was spoken of, and I 
remarked how inaccessible he was. To 
which Mr. Browning repHed: " I think 
that Tennyson likes admiration as well as 
anyone else, but he wants his admiration 
filtered." 

Matthew Arnold was at that time 
lecturing in America. Browning was 
curious to know how he was succeeding, 
and inquired minutely. He wondered if 
" Mat," as he called him, would be able 
to make himself heard in a largre hall. 
He related how he went to one of Mr. 
Arnold's lectures in London and could 
not understand the speaker, though 
he sat at no great distance from the 
platform. Said Browning : " I went up 
to him afterward and said, ' Why, Mat, 
we can't hear you.' " I thought he 
seemed interested in the possible finan- 
cial outcome of Mr. Arnold's visit, for 
he laughingly expressed himself as glad 
that such a country as America existed. 
A poor English man of letters could 
write a lecture, take it over there, and 
bring home a pocketful of money. 



50 A FEW WORDS 

He spoke of Mary Anderson whom 
he had met at a dinner not long before, 
— sat next her at table, I think he said — 
and pronounced her " charming." He 
seemed to find satisfaction in having dis- 
covered that she was a very " sensible " 
young woman. 

This suggested the drama, and he 
at once began to inquire about Lawrence 
Barrett, who was bringing out " The Blot 
on the 'Scutcheon',' what sort of an 
actor was he, and had I any idea of the 
impression the play was making ? He 
evidently wanted to get an opinion at 
first hand from some one who had seen 
the play. Mr. Barrett had plentifully 
supplied him with newspaper reports. 

Tlie topic of American novels came 
up, and I spoke of F. Marion Crawford 
and George W. Cable. He had heard 
of neither of them, and said: " I wonder 
if Crawford is the son of my old friend 
Crawford, the sculptor ? " I begged per- 
mission to send him a copy of Old Creole 
Days, and to indicate a story which 



ON ROBERT BROWNIXG $1 

seemed to me especially powerful. This 
I did, and a few days later came the 
following note : 

19 Warwick Crescent, W., 

May — th, — 

Dear M : 

You are good indeed. I received 
the little book, and have at once read the 
tale you recommended, and, I think, 
recommended very justly. I shall read 
the rest with every expectation of being 
gratified. 

Ever truly yours, 

Robert Browning. 

The open piano caught my eyes, 
and with Abt Voglcr in mind, I said, '' I 
have always had the feeling, from read- 
ing your poems on musical subjects, that 
you were a piano player, Mr. Brown- 
ing." To which Miss Browning replied, 
quite quickly, " Oh, he does play." 

Being interested in music, I had 
hoped that he would talk about it; but 
he only remarked his great fondness for 



52 A FEW WORDS 

the piano sonatas of Beethoven, which, 
he said, he knew " by heart." I did not 
understand by this that he had them at 
the ends of his fingers, and was prepared 
to execute any one of them, when he 
should be so minded ; but rather that he 
" knew " them musically, as the perfectly 
intelligent and trained listener knows 
them. He was, however, able to jadge 
of certain musical compositions by play- 
ing them, and I wish that someone who 
knew him would tell us about the extent 
of his ability in this direction. How 
much did he play ? Was he able, for 
example, to execute that good old 
" family piece," the Op. 1 3 of Beethoven ? 
And did he play it like a man, or like a 
school-girl ? Could he play the so- 
called " Moonlight " Sonata, or the No. 
3 of Op. 31, or any of those well-known 
works which form the indispensable of a 
pianoist's repertory ? Or did he, on the 
other hand, merely " read " them from 
the notes, playing in the sense in which 
many a cultivated musical person plays. 



ox ROBERT BROWNING 53 

not pretending to go into detail, nor 
striving for finish, merely, as we some- 
times say, playing to amuse one's self. 

And if the person who shall give us 
this information is also able to speak 
with authority concerning George Eliot's 
musical powers, he will confer a great 
favor on many interested listeners by 
speaking. Strange it is that so many 
writers who have touched her career at 
various points, have also shown con- 
summate skill in avoiding this one. It is a 
most interesting topic, especially to those 
who believe — as I myself venture to — 
that a knowledge of music is quite as 
important as a smattering of calculus, to 
the person aiming at culture ; and that 
it is of just as much importance to us to 
be able to play some musical instrument, 
or to listen to the playing of others, with 
a just appreciation of what it means, as 
to be able to calculate an eclipse, or to 
read Demosthenes dc Corona with the 
aid of a dictionary and a copy of Good- 
win's Greek Moods and Tenses. 



54 A FEW WORDS 

Mr. Browning made many kind 
references to his friends and readers in 
America. Hardly a day passed, he said, 
in which he did not get a letter from the 
other side of the Atlantic. He had had 
five that morning, not all of a cheerful 
nature, however. One was from a man 
who wanted to know what Browning 
" really and truly " thought of his own 
poetry; and as a preliminary to getting 
at that inner and private opinion, he 
made the request that the poet would 
prepare a list of those things which he 
himself liked best, arranging, the titles in 
order of preference. The poet seemed 
heartily amused at this idea; but it was 
plain to see that the only attention this 
letter would receive, had been already 
received, in the shape of the laugh it 
called forth. 

It is an excellent plan for the young 
hunter of celebrities to sit w^here he 
can watch the clock. He will be aston- 
ished at the rapidity with which the 
hands move, and will also discover an 



ON ROBERT BROWNING 55 

Opportunity for a new application of the 
proverb that " Brevity is the soul of wit." 
Other things beingr equal, when a small 
man goes to see a great man, the great 
man's joy of the visit is largely deter- 
mined by the shortness thereof 

To me the little visit was without a 
flaw ; and I came away with the feeling 
that, say what men would, Robert 
Browning was one of the finest gentle- 
men alive. 



ON ROBERT BROWNING 57 



Conclusion 

To Elizabeth Barrett was given the 
power of calling forth the most intense 
personal love on the part of her readers. 
She lives in the hearts of many as an 
ideal of womanhood. In some instances 
her memory has been cherished with an 
intensity which bordered on passion. 
These lovers have almost invariably been 
of her own" sex. So jealous are they for 
her perfect fame, that the faintest shadow 
upon it, no matter how remotely derived, 
is sufficient to cause them anxiety and 
alarm. 

Such a shadow appeared, from time 
to time, in the form of reports that 
Robert Browning was about to marry 
again. His death has put an effectual 
stop to the circulation of this wretched 
bit of gossip. How could these over- 
anxious ones have given credence for 



58 A FEW WORDS 

one moment to such a story? Though 
it would seem that, in the course of the 
centuries, poor woman has gotten herself 
into that state of mind which permits her 
to believe absolutely anything of her 
so-called natural protector. But without 
meaning to imply anything derogatory 
of second marriages — which are often so 
brilliantly successful that a nameless 
cynic has been led to say : " Every man 
should marry at least twice '' — here is a 
case where the most beautiful love story 
in the world has been brought to an 
idyllic conclusion by reason of the fact 
that no second marriage took place. 
Who, after carefully reading Ojic Word 
More, could look for any other ending to 
this perfect story? If the memory of 
Elizabeth Barrett is so precious to the 
readers of her verse, think how infinitely 
precious it must have been to him who 
made this sweet woman-poet his wife ! 
Read the account of how he brought her 
out of the gloom of a sick-chamber into 
the glory of Italian sunshine, and, with 



ON ROBERT BROWNING 59 

infinite love and tenderness, watched her 
return to life and health. Has he not 
sung- his devotion in lines of matchless 
splendor? Read her reply in the glow- 
ing Sonnets from the Portuguese, where 
she " counts the ways " in which she 
loves, promising that, if it be God's will, 
her love for him shall grow deeper and 
stronger after she is taken from him. 
Who can believe, that, in all these years 
since her death, he has been any less the 
lover than when he wrote of her as " half- 
angel and half-bird, and all a wonder and 
a wild desire " ? 

It has been the fashion, in every age 
of the world, for the pessimist to lift up 
his voice, and bewail the hardness of the 
times in which he lives. Surely the lit- 
erary pessimist has excellent opportuni- 
ties to exert his power of lamentation 
just about now. What with our Kreiit- 
zer Sonata translations, our endless and 
tiresome stories " from the French, " 
with seduction and adultery for the chief 
and only motives, and the whole body of 



6o A FEW WORDS 

fiction writers crying aloud for more lib- 
erty in writing — as if they couldn't get 
along with the liberty that Dickens, 
George Eliot, Thackeray, Hawthorne, 
Charlotte Bronte and others had I — it 
would seem that things were coming to 
an unfortunate pass. But who dreams 
that this puny, so-called erotic school 
has any real life in it ; or that it will strut 
other than an exceedingly brief hour 
upon the stage ? It must perish because 
it is so exceedingly bad. And as for 
liberty, we don't need the liberty of Zola, 
or anything like unto it. The man is a 
charlatan, with all his power. A disciple 
of Balzac, forsooth ! Well, he may, per- 
haps, scour the pots and kettles in great 
Balzac's literary kitchen, but nothing 
more. 

This was suggested by the Krcut- 
zer Sonata ; and that false narrative of 
lust, jealousy and murder came into my 
mind while writing of how a man of 
great genius, and a woman of great gen- 
ius loved one another, and were faithful 



ox ROBERT BROWNING 6 1 

to the end ; and I think that if any 
antidote is wanted for the influence of 
that sort of books which the Kreutzer 
Sonata represents, it will be found in just 
such beautiful tales from real life as the 
history of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning. 

END 



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